The challenge of anger among young Muslims in America

In a Gallup survey last year, 26 percent of Muslim youth in the United States reported feeling angry as compared to 14 percent of Protestant youth and 18 percent of the general American population. They are angrier than their parents. This survey had 10 questions on mental health and almost all results when it came to young Muslims revealed that they were the least happy and the most angry.

It is important to note that this March 2009 report, entitled, “Muslim Americans: A National Portrait”, is not just any poll or survey. It is highly reliable since it compiles results of almost 500 Gallup surveys. The Gallup surveys America every day and for this report, they picked a year and a half worth of surveys and cross- tabulated the results among different faith groups between Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and the general American population.

It is critical that all community leaders, Muslims and non-profit foundations, as well as our government, pay more attention to this demographic group and find effective ways to address its challenges.

My reaction: so stunned I had to meet with Gallup’s pollsters

Only 40 percent of Muslim youth surveyed by Gallup considered themselves to be “thriving” as compared to 61 percent of Protestants and 53 percent of the general U.S. population. That is the lowest level among all youth groups surveyed.

After reading the whole report, I was so concerned about the findings revealing the anger and frustration of our youth that I interviewed one of the report’s senior analysts for Radio Islam and met the other two in person to discuss these statistics.

I asked them what they thought would be the three major reasons for American Muslim youth’s lower level of happiness and higher level of anger. Unfortunately, Gallup did not ask those questions in their survey. But I found in their study and in other ones, some other information which might provide insight into this.

What young Muslims are facing in America

Islamophobia clearly seems to be playing a role in shaping the attitudes of young Muslims. According to one Zogby international poll, 75 percent of young Muslims said they or someone they know has been discriminated against. A Columbia University survey of Muslim students in New York public schools found that 28 percent had been stopped by police as a result of racial profiling and seven percent of them said they had been physically assaulted because of who they are.

This may explain why young Muslims are also the least likely to feel safe at night in their communities. According to the Gallup survey, only 59 percent of young Muslims responded yes to the question “do you feel safe walking alone at night in the city or the area in which you live” as compared to 70 percent of youth in the general U.S. population.

The Gallup survey found that young Muslims are also less likely to be employed. Sixty-seven percent as opposed to 79 percent of young Protestants who have jobs. Muslim youth were also the least likely youth group to report being satisfied with their jobs.

The human face of this pressure from Islamophobia can be found in cases like that of a Muslim girl featured on the NPR program “This American Life” in December 2006 (). The show detailed how she went from being a well-adjusted student to a pariah mocked by both fellow students and teachers for her faith This was at a school in an unnamed small town in the state of New York. As a result, she wanted to leave Islam. The crisis also resulted in her parents splitting up.

Harassment and discrimination are hardly news to older American Muslims, who have become accustomed to hearing or even experiencing it on a regular basis. The FBI has conducted more than 500,000 interviews of Muslims in America; American Muslim leaders, advocates and activists are routinely harassed when traveling, especially when returning home; mosques in America have been checked for nuclear bombs; a majority of Americans think very negatively of Islam and Muslims and 22 percent don’t even want a Muslim as their neighbor.

In addition, America’s wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, its heavy military presence in all but 19 of the world’s 195 countries and the deadly acts of terrorists have led to deep-seated animosity towards Islam and Muslims.

What had not been known on a quantitative level until the Gallup survey was how deeply this has all affected Muslim youth. It’s obvious that there has been a serious trickle down effect.

For instance, Muslim wages post-9/11 have gone down by 10 percent and scholars, counselors and community activists have reported that there are a higher number of mental health issues Muslims are grappling with. All of these factors affect youth in our community as well, who are not immune to their environment.

How young Muslims are responding to these pressures

Young Muslims are responding differently to these pressures. Forty seven percent of college-going young Muslims drink alcohol, while 16 percent engage in binge drinking; 29 percent of Muslim students in New York public schools sometimes use a non-Muslim name to get by. Some have changed their names to Christian names. A small number have joined urban gangs. Some have left Islam and some have become more religious.

These pressures and the resulting anger may explain why Muslim youth are the most disengaged among all the youth groups surveyed by Gallup when it comes to voting. Young Muslim Americans are the lowest percentage of any youth group registered to vote.

This marginalization of the community and alienation of its youth constitutes a breading ground for extremism, while proper engagement has only benefits for both Muslims and the United States in general.

The risk of rising extremism among young Muslims

When a Pew survey in May 2006 asked “can suicide bombings of civilian targets to defend Islam be justified?”, 69 percent of American Muslims, aged 18 to 29, said never; 26 percent said ever; 15 percent said often; 11 percent said rarely and 5 percent said they didn’t know.

These 31 percent who did not choose the “never” option are a real concern for this author, considering that in Islamic law, taking a civilian’s life is never justified. Period. To figure out who this particular subset of young Muslims is, we need to ask the following questions:

Are these Muslims driven by any ideology?

Have they accepted extremist interpretations?

Why have they come to this conclusion?

Were the Pew’s questions clear enough?

Were they thinking of a battlefield while answering these questions or of their neighborhoods?

No matter how we look at the data, these are serious numbers which require serious deliberation in our society, our Muslim communities, as well as for people concerned with peace and justice, our governments as well as those responsible for keeping our neighborhoods safe and healthy.

Muslim Americans are concerned about youth radicalism

It seems as if a good number of Muslims are concerned about this issue of youth and radicalism as well. A Pew survey question asked respondents “how concerned are you about the rise of Islamic extremism in the U.S.” Thirty-six percent said “very concerned” and 25 percent reported being “somewhat concerned”.

While this author has never been worried about Osama bin Laden having any appeal to Muslim Americans, I am not so sure about Anwar al-Awlaki. The latter is a U.S.-born citizen who has served as an Imam in three Masjids in America, and has reportedly been considered a balanced source of Islamic education through his audio cds for a number of years. His audio lectures have sold far more widely than the most popular American Muslim preacher, Hamza Yusuf. The fact that Al-Awlaki has reportedly condoned violence is the most authoritative challenge to date for the Muslim community in North America, despite the fact that he currently lives in Yemen.

The challenge of engagement: start with the schools and colleges

Almost 99 percent of Muslim children attend public schools. Only one percent attend an Islamic day school. About four percent attend some form of additional Islamic education like weekend schools which are mostly limited to 40 hours of instruction per year. Therefore, the place where almost all Muslim youth are found are in American schools, colleges, and universities.

Our schools, our foundations, and people in the field of youth development must urgently develop programs and devise strategies which focus on engaging Muslim youth positively.

The mainstream media must equate Islamophobia with racism

Considering that most youth over 50 hours a week consuming media, it is important that responsible media discuss the challenges of Islamophobia and demonization of Muslims in American society. We cannot have healthy children unless we improve the environment we are raising our children in.

Although many Muslim organizations are trying to reach out to the media, their efforts seem to have not had little impact on Islamophobia in society. The vilification of Muslims and Islam has become relentless. Muslims are consistently portrayed as “the other”, not part of the United States, and unworthy of tolerance. Millions of dollars are being spent on a focused program that emphasizes that Muslims are inherently violent, holding them responsible for WWI and WWII, along with recent conflicts.

Even organizations like The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) , which was established to fight hate, suggested that Islam’s declaration of faith, the Shahada, is an “expression of hate” that is “closely identified” with terrorism. They later apologized.

FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) has done an excellent job of documenting how Islamophobia is becoming mainstream. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3648

Public policy must engage Muslims

While President Barack Obama has been reaching out to the Muslim world since he took office, it is critical that he engage Muslims at home first. America needs its Muslims, except that the only Muslim serving in the White House who helped the President with his speeches, is no longer working there.

The last presidential administration treated American Muslims as virtual enemies of the state, discouraged our civic involvement and suppressed our voices. We were isolated and essentially shunned. In this new era of change, however, it is vital to U.S. interests to engage American Muslims as partners in building relationships with the Muslim world. This is not only a matter of respect, but one of common interests.

American Muslims are a global village made up of diverse communities of African-Americans and immigrants from many nations. Among Muslims, they are one of the largest groups of highly educated professionals in the world.

Tens of thousands are physicians and surgeons. Others serve in higher education. Many proudly serve in the U.S. military. I personally know of at least six Muslims in Chicago who played critical roles in key Muslim governments. Many are directly connected with the ruling elites of the countries of their birth.

Part of the change that American Muslims hope for is to be valued as an asset by their country rather than viewed as suspects.

Muslims are not looking for handouts. We're simply striving for equal opportunity and inclusiveness. That will give a far better message to the Muslim world than speeches. This will send a far stronger message to Muslim youth in America than anything else.

The Muslim community must reallocate its resources for youth development

The Muslim community in the United States is a strong and self-reliant community. It is pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars every year in Islamic education. However, most of these funds are going into Islamic schools. This author is personally committed to Muslim schools. However, these institutions educate less than a one percent of Muslim students. The above described challenge requires our community to reallocate a substantial amount of its resources to reaching out to it’s youth in public schools and campuses for supplemental education, moral support and counseling.

Just looking at five campuses in Chicago, I noticed that Hillel chapters, which represent Jewish students, have more than 30 full-time staff including rabbis. However, there is not a single full-time or part-time staff member at Muslim organizations on campus, much less an Islamic scholar. We can learn a great deal from the Jewish community in the U.S. in their struggle to keep young Jews connected to their Jewish heritage and community.

Sound Vision intends to develop a great amount of content this year focused on topics like Islam in a pluralistic context and discussing objections to Islam. However, we and others who have been concerned about the challenges and frustrations of Muslim youth in America are unable to do much because of the absence of resources.

Please donate to Sound Vision and other institutions providing assistance to the 95% Muslim youth who are not connected with the Muslim community.

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Comments

A civilisation is measured not by the rights it grants its majority but the privileges it allows its minorities.

Muslim community not only needs Mosques but also state funded Muslim schools for their bilingual children. They need to learn and be well versed in standard English to follow the national Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. They also need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural heritage and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit.

A good school is not just a knowledge factory or a conveyor belt for churning out exam passes - it is a community, a family. A community is held together by common values and principles.

It is a common saying that British schooling is upholding British values of integration, respect, tolerance and equality. But all minority groups find British schooling is the home of institutional racism and British teachers are chicken racist. This is one of the many reason why they would like to see their children attending their own schools with their own teachers. Muslim community started setting up school in the 80s and I set up the first Muslim school in 1981 and now there are 166 Muslim schools and only 11 are state funded. Sikh and Hindu communities have set up their own schools. Now Black community is thinking of setting up schools with their own teachers.

Muslim families are as entitled as any other religious group to schools that nurture their children's faith. Muslim pupils should be educated in Muslim schools because the current system is marginalising them. Teaching Muslim children in a Muslim school would remove the "problem of them being exposed" to values that conflict with Islamic faith. Muslim pupils are disadvantaged and marginalised in the city's state schools because the cultural heritage of the curriculum is "European and Christian".

Muslim schools provide an education in accordance with the Muslim beliefs and values, such as providing single-sex schooling after puberty. They are thus a response to the danger of absorption into the dominant culture.

There is already a divided education system in all inner cities because of the demographics of the population. This has been the situation for 15 to 20 years. If this was so important why has nothing been done before?

A growing number of British-born Muslims and especially Pakistanis are suffering from psychological problems and apathy and are either turning to crime or radical Islam. Majority of British Muslims are from Pakistan.

A growing number of young Pakistanis feel they are ‘second class citizens and will remain so. They are addressed as outsiders – as ‘immigrant, Paki or Muslim’ and increasingly shut out or discriminated against. The hardening of attitudes towards Muslims in British society is also having an effect.

I have been campaigning for state funded Muslim schools for the last 35 years
because British schooling is the home of
institutional racism and British teachers are chicken racists. British
teachers are not role models for Muslim children during their developmental
periods.

I set up the first Muslim school in London in 1981 and now there are about
170 Muslim schools and only 12 are state funded. I would like to see each
and every Muslim child in a state funded Muslim school with bilingual Muslim
teachers as role model. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a
teacher in a Muslim school.

Western media and politicians have been trying their best to propagate
against Muslim schools. Muslim schools are even called Osama bin Laden Academies by a Teaching Union. Only less than 5% of Muslim children attend Muslim
schools while more than 95% are in state schools to be mis-educated and
de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers.

The demand for state funded Muslim schools is in accordance with the law of
the land. Muslim community is not asking for any favour. Muslim community
pays all sorts of taxes and is less burden on social services.

Church leaders say it is no longer "appropriate" for them to run Sacred
Heart RC Primary School which has just six Christian pupils. The school in
Blackburn, Lancs, could be handed to the nearby Masjid-e-Tauheedul mosque.

Harry Devonport of Blackburn with Darwen Council Children's Services, said
the decision to abandon the school was made by the Diocese of Salford.
Diocese education director Geraldine Bradbury said: "We have never
experienced a change to this extent before. We would not be serving the
local community by insisting that we run the school. It brings things like
having a Catholic head teacher and devoting 10% of the timetable to RE.
"It would be wrong of us to insist on putting a school community through
that."

There are hundreds of state and church schools where Muslim children are in
majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim
Academies. Bilingual Muslim children need bilingual Muslim teachers as role
models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a
non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
Iftikhar Ahmad

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I apologize to all for the repeats. There was no indication it was posted and a message kept coming up saying the code was wrong. Due to this I tried several times and did not know it was going through. Though I do stress what i had to say, I would not have intentionaly repeated it. Again, my apologies.

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In the Name of AllahMost Gracious, Most MercifulAll praise is due to Allah alone. May He send peace and blessings upon his beloved, Muhammad; his family, companions and all who follow him until the day of judgement. To proceed:This article is very well done but I think it overlooks one major contributing factor. When I say this it is not exactly accurate because the paper deals with the issue over and over - but from a perspective different from mine. Perhaps if I re-read the article a couple more times I will change my position on what I'm about to say but I will go on and put this here clearly for the readers anyway. PERHAPS the one thing over looked is that the Muslim youth here in America do not feel free in our own land. We have the non-Muslims constantly equating Islam with terror (which the article addressed) but then we also have the older Muslims becoming so afraid due to this that they will not allow the youth to express their Islam. Due to this you have either Muslims who go to extremes to express their Islam or Muslims who would like to BE Muslim in every aspect of their lives but due to the non-Muslim propaganda and the Muslim fear - we are not allowed. We become trapped in a world where we are told what Islam is, encouraged to live our faith but then restricted in nearly every way when it comes to looking, feeling, thinking, acting, speaking and playing as Muslims. Why is it that in nearly every major town there are gun ranges, archery ranges, paintballing fields, martial arts schools, etc. - but Muslim youth are discouraged from doing what is lawfull, what their peers do on a normal basis, what is fun and from the sunnah to engage in...discouraged due to the fear instilled in the older generation due to the propaganda. Yet we are more than happy to have them waste their time (i.e. Their lives) playing on some electronic medium or chasing a ball up and down a field. This is seen as good wholesome fun for Muslims while expressely sunnah recreational activities are seen as a training for jihad and so must be feared, avoided or hidden. This of course is not to say that everyone would enjoy such activities, instead it is in order to say that the youth are tired of having their activities and intentions questioned and criticized by non-Muslim and Muslim alike. Where are the lawfull activities for the youth IN the communities? There is a serious disconnect between the immigrant Muslim elders and their American raised youth let alone the immigrant Muslims whocome from oppressive lands and are inclined to fear the propaganda and the American converts raised up in this society to speak their mind and believe they have the right to do what they want as long as it is lawfull. This too is a great source of frustration in the youth which then turns to anger when it is either not addressed or worse, silenced.This fear/control mechanism which is labelled psychological terrorism goes a long, long way in contributing to the anger in Muslim youth...then when this anger boils over the F.B.I. is right there to set up another twenty year old young man and plaster it on the news to creat more fear and control.If one truely wants to fix the problem of anger in the Muslim youth, one needs to take away the fear and instill confidence in their Muslim identity, instill courage to be Muslim...indeed, those who believe and do righteious good deeds, they are the best of creation.

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In the Name of AllahMost Gracious, Most MercifulAll praise is due to Allah alone. May He send peace and blessings upon his beloved, Muhammad; his family, companions and all who follow him until the day of judgement. To proceed:This article is very well done but I think it overlooks one major contributing factor. When I say this it is not exactly accurate because the paper deals with the issue over and over - but from a perspective different from mine. Perhaps if I re-read the article a couple more times I will change my position on what I'm about to say but I will go on and put this here clearly for the readers anyway. PERHAPS the one thing over looked is that the Muslim youth here in America do not feel free in our own land. We have the non-Muslims constantly equating Islam with terror (which the article addressed) but then we also have the older Muslims becoming so afraid due to this that they will not allow the youth to express their Islam. Due to this you have either Muslims who go to extremes to express their Islam or Muslims who would like to BE Muslim in every aspect of their lives but due to the non-Muslim propaganda and the Muslim fear - we are not allowed. We become trapped in a world where we are told what Islam is, encouraged to live our faith but then restricted in nearly every way when it comes to looking, feeling, thinking, acting, speaking and playing as Muslims. Why is it that in nearly every major town there are gun ranges, archery ranges, paintballing fields, martial arts schools, etc. - but Muslim youth are discouraged from doing what is lawfull, what their peers do on a normal basis, what is fun and from the sunnah to engage in...discouraged due to the fear instilled in the older generation due to the propaganda. Yet we are more than happy to have them waste their time (i.e. Their lives) playing on some electronic medium or chasing a ball up and down a field. This is seen as good wholesome fun for Muslims while expressely sunnah recreational activities are seen as a training for jihad and so must be feared, avoided or hidden.This fear/control mechanism which is labelled psychological terrorism goes a long, long way in contributing to the anger in Muslim youth...then when this anger boils over the F.B.I. is right there to set up another twenty year old young man and plaster it on the news to creat more fear and control.If one truely wants to fix the problem of anger in the Muslim youth, one needs to take away the fear and instill confidence in their Muslim identity, instill courage to be Muslim...indeed, those who believe and do righteious good deeds, they are the best of creation.

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It is great article; it has discussed in details the outside factor on our youth. In my opinion, the problem is much more complicated than what we think, of course the society around us has an impact on our kids, and youth, but I think one of the main factors of our kid’s anger, and frustration is internally in origin, I mean it comes from within the family itself.The way we raise, teach, or discipline our kids has too much to do with who our kids, or youth feels. Most of the time we rely on very old and traditional ways to deal with our kids, ways my dad or granddad use to used it in mu home country. I wish the author could elaborate on that side of the story.

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Thanks for a very well-written and interesting article! I am the wife of a Muslim man (and mother of Muslim children)-- and a lot of what I see here hits home.
I would add one more factor that I see in my own life/experience. I was actually raised Jewish and one of the things that was taken for granted within much of the Jewish community was that kids HAD to be given a lot of extra education and support if they were expected to "turn out well". I think Muslim families know this and it's important to them, but not all are necessarily prepared as to how to accomplish this.
Most Jews have family histories of being minorities in whatever country they've lived in, so over generations, they've developed strategies to make Judaism both portable but also inviting and attractive to children, knowing that they have to do this in contrast to the larger population, when possible. In other words, they've KNOWN that the larger community wasn't sufficient to raise their children approriately; but they've also had the strategies and resources available to raise them Islamic-ly. Some Muslim immigrants (as in the family I married into) are sure, on one hand, that they don't want their kids to take on "majority" values when it comes to things like drinking or dating; but on the other hand, having come from a largely homogeneous Muslim society (in this case, Yemen), they are not even used to thinking in terms of how to raise kids in a pluralistic society. They know of course that they want to teach their kids to pray and NOT to engage in "unwholesome" things; but they don't necessarily even think in terms of things like youth groups-- where they came from, the whole society served as the incubating ground for kids, so even the concept of a youth group is alien.
I have a Palestinian friend who is living a full, full Islamic life as a teen. She went to an Islamic high school and still spends much of her time in an Islamic youth group. She seems both happy and engaged as a Muslim and as an American. I think of her in contrast to my nephews and nieces, who are essentially expected to navigate the huge contrast between their Muslim home life and their American schools and jobs by themselves (with some input from their parents and concerned adults like me, their weird multi-religious aunt). Just reading this study makes me want to put all of my nieces and nephews (and my kids) into Islamic schools and youth groups so they have the benefit of being around other kids and adults who've really put themselves to the task of figuring out how to make living in this country as a Muslim a rich and FUN experience. This is a lot of food for thought.

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Articles like this are very encouraging to those of us in American who are outside the established Muslim community. I frequently visit SoundVision to get an unbiased view of what Muslims are thinking and doing in the US, and how you are creatively and earnestly dealing with issue of living in our country, Sometimes I even hear personally from SoundVision staff on issues of importance to all of us. Your work is so very important. I am very grateful for this site, and enjoy sharing the positive things of the Islamic American community with my students and friends. Devout Christians and devout American Muslims have many common concerns about our our world, our nation and our families. Keep up the excellent work.

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Good article providing facts with statistics. There are many factors for Muslim Youth Isolation and anger. Unfortunately, as indicated in the article only 1-2 percent of Muslim Youth attend full time Islamic school and lot of money is spent on bricks and mortar to establish these schools. The need of the time is to establish in every community where there is a mosque or Islamic center, "Muslim Youth Groups". Provide financial support to these groups, so these groups can perform volunteer or civic duties for the communities, to every resident regardless of their religious faith. Muslim youths in general are not groomed by the parents/Muslim community leaders to have interaction with their non-Muslim peer group after school hours. Muslim communities should pool their monetary resources together to provide funds to establish Islamic Institutes in the degree colleges and Universities in the USA. Islamic Relief USA, hosts "Day of Dignity" for the homeless people in 17 cities of the USA, and engages youth of Muslim Student Organization of area colleges and is very well appreciated by the local community, elected officials and by the residents. Now it is time for action. We should take lessons from survey results and instead of providing negative comments, we should act now. Too much has been spent in building mosques and Islamic centers, lets spend now in our youth development and engaging them in their community development that will give self esteem a boost.

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Excellent article. I can identify with it, and backit up with facts and examples. The solutions need to be identified clearer than mentioned. Local, and maybe the Federal, government need to realize its implications ahead of time.

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